Studying is now like a race: Rakeysh Mehra

Rakeysh Mehra stopped work on his film on the education system, titled ‘96.7’ when he found out that DU cutoffs were already 100%

| TNN | Nov 22, 2011, 00:00 IST

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra

Filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, who’s busy with his upcoming “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag”, says that making a movie on sprinter Milkha Singh’s life has exposed him to many thing. One of them being the sporting culture of the country. Rakyesh says that with India’s strengths and the population, the country should get at least “50 medals in the Olympics,” but this is a distant dream. Not that it has anything to do with the “lack of facilities”, but has everything to do with “the lack of focus as a nation,” something that is apparent in the wonky education system of the country too.

Rakeysh told DT, “You’ll kill me for it, but I was ashamed the other day when I found out that at my college, Sri Ram College of Commerce, the cutoff list ended at 100%. I said ‘Oh my god, what are we doing?’ I think you really need to open up avenues for youngsters. They just can’t be going to coaching classes. Studying is now like a race. It’s about, ‘Who is scoring how much and what’s the percentile?’ It would be such a boring nation if we only had engineers in the country… it’ll kill the nation.”

“I can’t think of an educational institution which is just honouring a marksheet. It can’t be a more shallower organization... then you’re not creating citizens, you’re not creating great human beings, you are creating very uni-dimensional robots who are good in one subject and specialization of that one subject and in that syllabus. It’s crazy. I wish I can do something with the education system.”

There’s something he did try and do – write a script called “96.7”. “We’d started work on “96.7”, till I realized it had become redundant, and I should work on a subject called 100%. It was about the education system. Perhaps I’ll make it once I understand the whole system… perhaps my views are very lopsided right now. But the seeds have been sown,” he says.

Rakeysh feels that addressing the system is the need of the hour. “I hope they hear me –Delhi University – whether it’s SRCC or St. Stephen’s or Hindu, they need to get their acts together. You can’t take kids based on percentages... you are already dividing the country and you are not letting people come together. So, take 50% like that and 50% like that… it’s complex, but you’ll have to derive a way of doing it. Something really needs to be done… this is not a problem, I don’t see it as a problem. This way, we’d just be creating another world, a world full of ignorance.”

“Imagine if Shakespeare goes to DU and he’s told, ‘We can’t take you based on stories you’ve written as your marksheet isn’t that cool.’ Or if a Leonardo, or Rabindranath Tagore goes there, and writes something called “Gitanjali” and they tell him, ‘Mr Tagore, it’s nice to write things such as ‘Where the head is held high’, but where is your marksheet?”

Movie on Dhaula Kuan rape case While Rakeysh is taking on Delhi University, there is another one being made which has a Delhi connect. Delhi-based actor Sharhaan Singh, known for tele serial “Uttaran”, tells us that he’s playing a baddie in a movie which is based on the Dhaula Kuan rape case. Talking about the movie, which has been named “Dily Dily Dily”, Sharhaan discloses, “We’ll be shooting the final climax scenes of the movie in Delhi on November 26.” “I am playing a negative character in the film, which is based on the real life story of the Dhaula Kuan rape case that shook Delhi a few years ago. The movie will also have Nasir Abdullah, Mukul Nag, Abhijit Dutta and others.”

Sharhaan had to grow his hair and beard to get the typical goonda look for the movie which was mainly shot in Delhi and Manali.
Piyali Dasgupta

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